


it's late and i think it's about time for you and me to get closer

by magnetichearts



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blow Jobs, Body Worship, Bonding, Character Study, Cunnilingus, Dirty Talk, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Praise Kink, Smut, Voyeurism, and care about each other, and unemotional but nooooo these two just had to go and emotionally connect, it's not like i'm in control of the story anymore, like literally a fraction of the size, oh fuck and, okay so basically katara and zuko are just thirsty ass hoes who are hot for each other, umm i hope you like it it was not supposed to be this long at all, yeah basically that's the entire thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:07:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23255200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetichearts/pseuds/magnetichearts
Summary: Zuko’s face is perfect for him, all sharp angles and planed skin, and it’s almost vicious in its beauty, almost too pretty and angular, and she wonders if she were to trail her fingers along the edge of his jaw, would she cut them? If she were to caress his cheek, to press her lips just underneath his eyes, would she hurt herself?Katara's eyes drift down towards his lips, and sweat beads on them. She’s hypnotized by the way his lips pull and twist along with his face, as the muscles in his jaw clench. His lips look unfairly full, and she wonders what it would be like to press her hands against the blades of his cheekbones and bring his mouth close to hers.He is a study in contradictory terms, sharp lines and harsh angles that melt into soft skin and gentle touches; and Katara cannot think of a time when she will not be fascinated by him.or; katara and zuko can't stop noticing each other, at the worst time possible. it's getting to be annoying for the both of them.(title from "the sun, the moon, and the stars" by prince)
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 66
Kudos: 1348





	it's late and i think it's about time for you and me to get closer

**Author's Note:**

> asdfghjkl i literally hate myself for writing this but whatever. anyways, you can dedicate this monstrosity to miss corona, for leaving me stuck in my room for the past week utterly bored with nothing to do. i actually wrote about 10k of this before i got break, but it's finished and a lot more polished sooner than anticipated because of all the free time i had, procrastinating on homework. it was supposed to be around 5k long, yes, i know it's four times that, we all know i have zero word count control, so let's just go along with it, ok?
> 
> this got a lot sappier than i thought it would, mainly because i have a _lot_ of emotions about zuko and katara, zuko in particular, and there's a lot of body worship and soft words between the two of them, because i'm incapable of writing them any other way. this is set in between the southern raiders and ember island players, and literally will obliterate canon, (good) just for clarification's sake. 
> 
> also, please don't come at me for my characterization of zuko or katara, this is my first time writing these characters and i love them so much, i've loved this show since i was like, 8, ok? no hate please!
> 
> final note-game to play for y'all, it's called: spot how bisexual the writer is based on how i describe them

Perhaps it’s a cliche, but he finds her under the light of the full moon, water crashing against her legs. 

He holds back. Katara is still frigid, still unwelcoming and so furious it coats her skin in ice, but Zuko does not want to disturb her, does not want to pull her out of her trance.

Anger, anger Zuko  _ knows _ , as well as he knows breathing. But this frigid air that Katara gives him, that he has no clue how to handle. 

At least before, he made her explode, spark like the brightest flame in the galaxy. Now she is colder than the winds that bit at his cheeks in the South Pole.

All he can do is try to get through to her, but relentlessly trying, that gets tiring after a while. 

The warm dirt digs into his toes, and he savors it. He misses the warmth, almost as much as he misses his home. The river laps at her knees, just high enough for her to bend without being swept away. Zuko settles himself behind a tree and peers at her, a master waterbender in her element, a prodigy, a warrior. 

Katara is talented, that much he knows, even back when he was chasing them over the world, even when he was trapped in the catacombs, trapped with crystal and piercing blue eyes. 

(he wonders if he will ever be able to go back to ba sing se, back to where everything changed, back to where he hurt the only person capable of loving him, the only person who ever cared about him)

But this, this is more than talent, this is hard work, this is pure skill, raw energy. Zuko knows this. And with a startling sense of clarity, Zuko realizes that despite what he thinks, Katara does not bend like Azula, flawless, cleanly, easily, almost lazily. She bends like him, with thought, precision, with sweat and blood and tears behind it. 

They both have fought, even if their battles have been different. 

He watches as she flicks her wrist and freezes the water around her hand, turning it into a fist of ice, running through waterbending forms over and over again. Something tingles in the back of his mind, a feeling of familiarity, a sense of knowing. 

Zuko lets his eyes drift further down her body, beyond her arms, down to her waist, down to where her legs disappear into the water. He feels his face become flush as he watches the dip of her hip shift and pull as she twists around, swinging her leg in the air in a clean arc, droplets of water scattering, glinting in the moonlight. 

Katara is beautiful, the most beautiful person he thinks he has ever seen. There are very few things Zuko knows to be true, but this is one of them. But before, he had dismissed this fact as typical, appropriate for what he had heard. After all, it was well known that Water Tribe women, while still regarded as savages in the Fire Nation and backwards in the Earth Kingdom, were famous for being the most beautiful in the world . And Katara is beautiful. 

But this is more than simple beauty. Zuko finds himself fascinated at the way her body twists as she bends, water whips swirling around her torso. He has never let himself look before, partly because he knew she wouldn’t hesitate to kill him, but mostly for respect. 

But he can’t help himself. He lets himself drink in the way her long,  _ long _ hair plasters to the back of her neck, the ends dripping from dangling in the river. Sweat beads at her temples as she bends, and it's far more attractive than it has any right to be. 

He hates the fact that she’s wearing nothing more than her bindings, smooth, umber skin bare and exposed for his greedy eyes to feast on. His fingers twitch, and he wants to wrap a hand around that waist and drag her closer to him, feel her heart pulse underneath his own. 

_ Fuck _ . He drags a hand down his face. What the hell is wrong with him? But he still can’t tear his eyes away from her. 

Zuko resists the urge to kill himself when she spins and drops into a stance, and all of a sudden, everything clicks into place. She’s waterbending, but with firebending forms. It’s more aggressive than he’s seen before, sharp jabs and punches rather than graceful, fluid forms, and that should not turn him on, but it kind of does. 

Normally, Katara is dry even as she waterbends, flicking water and sweat off of her, but she’s let herself become drenched, in water, and the moonlight, and Zuko can’t help but watch a graceful arm effortlessly slice through the air, water running down the length of it. 

He follows the curve of that arm down her body, flushing as he gazes at her stomach, tight and smooth, left bare by her bindings. He can barely glance at the curve of her breasts for more than a second, but what he sees is still far too entrancing for his own good. 

He looks at her legs instead, but this is a bad decision, because now, all he can think about is hoisting her up, hands running over the dip of her waist, those lean legs wrapping around his waist, and he  _ really _ wants to kill himself now. 

But he also really wants to run his hands over her legs and tangle those limbs around his own body, because he’s pretty sure being with her would be good enough to kill him. And it would definitely be a worthwhile death. 

He forces himself to drag his gaze upward, to save the last remaining shreds of his dignity, but this proves to be an even worse decision, and his focus is completely shot when Katara does something he’s never seen from a waterbender. 

She pulls two massive streams of water with each arm and swirls them around above her head, before shooting them forward by clapping her hands, and they arc forward in a massive wall. 

It’s a firebending move Zuko himself has used more than once, and  _ fuck, _ if that isn’t the hottest thing he’s ever seen, Katara taking his moves and using them for waterbending. 

He’s further away, but he can just see the curve of her Cupid’s bow as she takes two smaller streams and meets them in an arc above her head, splashing down on her. This is a very bad decision for him, because all of a sudden, all Zuko can focus on is the way the water drips down the curve of her neck, and suddenly, his vision pulses with an image of him, leaning forward and pressing his lips to that same neck, following that droplet of water as it makes its way down her body. 

He can see himself clearly, tracing his tongue along the corded muscle as she turns her head, sucking a mark to where her jaw slopes down, the little triangle of skin just between her ear and her jaw, little nooks and oases of her body he wants to explore, wants to take forever drowning in. 

Futilely, he tries to put the mental brakes on that idea, but it’s far too late, and now he can’t take his eyes off of her. 

(in reality, zuko can never take his eyes off of katara. she is like the moon in every sense of the word, the celestial body he follows through the night without a second thought)

He wants to hear his name spill from those lips, wrap his hands around that waist and trail his fingers over every inch of skin he can see. He wants to bury his hands in her hair and drag her closer, closer, closer to him, and he so badly wants to press his lips against her neck, to where her throat pulses and water pools in the delicate curve of her shoulder, to suck on that pretty, pretty skin until it’s less so. 

He watches as she kicks a leg up in the air, body stretching, and he groans when she curves her body to perfect a waterbending stance. She’s far too limber and flexible for him to stand here and  _ not _ think of her, so really what is he supposed to do? 

God, he wants to spend eternity with her, wrap himself up in the scent of water lilies and feel her laughter. He can only imagine what it would be like if he could trail his fingers up the smooth expanse of her back, trace her curves and map every inch of her body with his hands, his eyes, his mouth. He wants to discover all the scars hidden beneath her wraps, and god, he craves the feeling of her lips on his.    


And to dig his hands into her hair, Agni, her hair, and bring her to him, to breathe in her scent and trace every inch of her body with his hands would be better than he could imagine. He craves her, wants to feel her writhe underneath him, her heartbeat stutter, wants his name to spill from her lips, a benediction. 

And she is all soft lines, all curves and smiles, gentle touches. Katara is like the sea, a storm hidden just underneath the waves, and he can only imagine how fantastic it would be if he could trace his fingers over the curve of her cheek, tangle his fingers in her hair, thumb at her lips and pull her only closer. 

Zuko slams his forehead into the tree he’s hiding behind, certain he’s going insane. He spares another peek at her, and he can just make out her lips from here, as she swipes her tongue over them to flick the water away. Water drips from her hair as she wrings it out, even if she can easily bend it off of her, and Zuko wants so badly to take those lips and to kiss her, even just for a moment, for a second.

He wants, no, craves her, to pull her closer to him, to trail his fingers over her face and map every inch of her skin. 

He thinks it would be not unlike getting struck by lightning. 

But Zuko does not get what he wants. If he wants something, he must fight for it, against all costs, but this, this he will not fight for. 

Even if he wants her so badly his head is spinning with it, even if he wants her so much he swears he can almost taste her, even if he wants her so much his entire soul aches with it, he wants her in a way he can never have her. 

And besides, if she doesn’t even like him as a person, she’ll never want him back. Not in the same way. 

He is doomed to chase after things he can never have. 

* * *

She finds Zuko in the morning light. 

Katara has woken up, unable to sleep, worry gnawing away at her stomach as she thinks of Azula flinging fire at Sokka, at her father. From what they had told her, they had barely escaped with their lives. 

And Zuko. He did something she never thought possible: he brought her father back to her. And Katara doesn’t know how to feel about him doing that. 

She doesn’t forgive him, yet. She doesn’t think she ever can. 

But she tosses back her sheets and clambers out of her roll, wanders down the path away from the temple, enough so no one can see her, and she finds him in a field. The sun is bleeding into the sky, and even now, she can feel her power slipping away. 

He’s holding his swords, but that’s not what shocks her. No, he’s  _ bending _ with his swords. 

Fire licks at them, turning them from cool metal into glowing, red hot blades, and she is fascinated at the graceful way he handles them. He hasn’t noticed her yet, or, if he has, he makes no indication of it. 

She hides herself and watches him. Even in the coolness of the morning, Zuko’s face is concentrated, determined. He is so different from Aang, so driven, so passionate, so sure of his destiny. He knows what he must do, and for this, Katara cannot help but begrudgingly commend him. He does not run from a difficult future. 

(and here, zuko is unlike any of them; he runs straight into danger, into difficulty, and katara is sure she could search for a thousand years and never reach the depths of his soul, the journeys he has taken to get here)

Zuko flips over and his fire flicks out from his palms, arcing over his head as he swings his swords, and Katara is mesmerized at the way he moves, like a panther. The swords are an extension of himself, and he is  _ talented, _ god, he is talented. She has heard him speak of how he was the least talented bender in his family, how he was second best to his sister, how he was the failure, who could barely produce a spark, but watching him now, she cannot fathom how he could be second rate to anyone. 

Although she is grateful Aang managed to escape Zuko, watching him bend and duel now, she is not sure how he ever managed it. Even as his power grows with the rising sun, he’s only more skilled than she ever thought possible. 

Sweat drips off of his nose as he trains in the growing heat, and Katara’s eyes slip from focusing simply on the instinctive, captivating grace of his forms to the boy in question, rather than what he is doing. 

Zuko is handsome. Katara might have a bit of temper, might feel a rage coil in her stomach when she looks at him, but she’s not  _ blind. _ He is handsome in a way very few boys she has ever met have been, handsome with all this past, handsome even in anger, handsome even with his scar. 

(she will never tell anyone this, but katara thinks he is even more handsome with his scar than he would have ever been without it)

He is easily the most handsome person she has ever seen, and she feels a little disgusted with herself for noticing something as trivial as that during such a tenuous time. 

But now, she can’t help but notice it. Against her will, (or, perhaps not) her gaze shifts further down, watching the line of his neck. He swallows roughly then, his throat pulsing, and she’s suddenly overcome with a sudden need to trace that corded, strong muscle with her fingers, flick her tongue out and taste the sweat off of his skin. 

Spirits, she was certainly going insane if she was lusting over the Fire Prince. But even as she berates herself, she can’t seem to tear her gaze away from him. 

(and that is the thing. zuko is her northern lights, her sun. she cannot help but gaze upon him. he is all encompassing, forcing her to focus on him. when he is around, she can think of little else) 

She watches him grip his hands tighter around the sword, watch the muscle in his arm jump at the action, and she follows it from his wrist to his shoulders, which seem to be carved from stone. Muscles in his shoulders shift as he runs through what she now recognizes as basic firebending forms, and she presses her lips together to hold in a sigh that bubbles up in her throat. 

Katara can’t help but run her eyes over the staves of Zuko’s neck to the ridge of his collarbone, watching the muscles in his shoulder ripple, pulling at the taut skin, and she’s going crazy, because all she can think about is gripping those shoulders and pulling him closer, closer to her. 

Her eyes move from Zuko’s shoulders to the mecca of his chest, sweat trailing down his torso, and god, she  _ hates _ firebending, if only because it turns the air hot with sickly sweet heat, if only because Zuko sweats a lot more, and she’s finding she hates just how much she doesn’t hate that. 

And now he wasn’t even profusely sweating, just glistening in a way that made her want to trace her hands over every inch of exposed skin, especially along the ridges of muscle, to see if they truly were as defined as she thought they were, and it’s almost sinful the way the muscles of his chest bunch and pull, sinewy and stretching underneath pale skin that she aches to touch. His skin is beautiful, pale, but marked with thousands of tiny scars that she wants to know the secrets to. She wants to touch and taste like she never has before, and god, she’s definitely going insane, but what a way to lose her mind. 

She bites down on her lip as she follows a stray droplet of sweat down the ridges of his body, pooling in his navel before soaking the hem of his trousers. Fuck, she wants to trace her tongue along those stupid abdominal muscles, and she also kind of wants to kill herself for thinking it. 

(zuko is a work of art in his own right, the kind you stare at for centuries, the kind that captivates long after it has been first made, the kind of art people search eons for to find the meaning to)

Because no matter how much she reminds herself she hates him, that doesn’t quell the fact that she’d also kind of like to lock him in her room. 

She tries to tear her gaze from his waist, but then her eyes drift to those lean hips, and she watches his skin, glistening with sweat, pull as he flips in the air, and she is suddenly assaulted with a very vivid image of wrapping her legs around those lean hips and pressing into him, tasting the sweat on his neck straight off of his skin. 

Is it terrible if she can just imagine the way his hands would dig into her hair, the warmth of his skin beneath her fingertips, the tight, leanness of his body? She presses her thighs together to get rid of the phantom feeling, her skin flushed. 

(she wants him, wants him in a way she has wanted very few things before, with an almost feral desire that threatens to consume her should she fail to control it)

Katara moves her gaze away from his waist, from the way fire flickers at his fingertips, but she ends up focusing on his face instead, and she knows she is well and truly screwed now. 

Sweat drips off of his aristocratic nose, straight and beautiful, and Katara lets herself linger on his jaw, wondering if it truly is as sharp as it seems. 

Zuko’s face is perfect for him, all sharp angles and planed skin, and it’s almost vicious in its beauty, almost too pretty and angular, and she wonders if she were to trail her fingers along the edge of his jaw, would she cut them? If she were to caress his cheek, to press her lips just underneath his eyes, would she hurt herself? 

She can barely admit to herself that the prospect is far more intriguing than off-putting. 

She swears her fingers  _ itch _ when thinking of running his hands through his hair, which now is soaked with sweat, and hangs in his eyes, dragging him closer to her. She wants to trace every inch of his face with her hands. 

Her eyes drift down towards his lips, and sweat beads on them. He doesn’t lick it off, too focused on moving from one stance to another, but she’s hypnotized by the way his lips pull and twist along with his face, as the muscles in his jaw clench. His lips look unfairly full, and she wonders what it would be like to press her hands against the blades of his cheekbones and bring his mouth close to hers. 

He is a study in contradictory terms, sharp lines and harsh angles that melt into soft skin and gentle touches; and Katara cannot think of a time when she will not be fascinated by him. 

He suddenly spins into a kick and turns his back to his, running through a set of more complicated firebending forms, and she thinks she chokes on air. 

She greedily takes in every inch of the muscles spanning his back, addicted to watching the way his muscles shift and ripple, the way the sweat trickles down his back in thin rivulets. 

(there is a large scar there too, about the size of her palm and razor thin, and katara aches to press her lips along the length of it, to draw the story behind it out of him with fierce kisses and passionate touches)

Her mind, horrible, perverted thing it is, flashes with an image of her digging her nails into his back as she arches up to kiss him, and those sinful lips, legs tightly wrapped around his hips, and she wants to throw herself off of this mountain. 

She forces herself away from the sight, and it’s far harder than it should be, creeps back into her roll, burying her face into her pillow and squeezing her eyes shut. But try as she might, she can’t get the image of Zuko’s face, entrenched in concentration, out of her mind, or ignore the phantom feeling of his hands ghosting over her hips, carving hot trails in their wake. 

But Katara cannot let herself want. Whenever she has let herself want, it has only ended in tragedy, and she knows Zuko could destroy her, should she let him. 

She’s already let him destroy her once. She’s not going to do it again. 

* * *

“Fuck,” he groans, holding his ribs. Aang had hit him with a particularly vicious bit of firebending, and while he’s happy that the kid is finally bending a little more aggressively, it comes at a much higher risk for him. 

“Stop it, Zuko,” Katara orders. She comes to sit down next to him on the beach and runs his hand over his ribs. “Broken ribs again?” she asks.

He nods, wincing in pain. He can’t count the number of times he’s broken his ribs, but having her here to heal them has been a lot more helpful, especially since she started healing him instead of threatening to kill him. 

That’s kind of what happens when you accompany someone on a life-changing trip, he thinks.

Katara shakes her head. “Stupid boys,” she mutters. She bends her water out of her flask and directly places her hands on his ribs, causing him to flinch. “Did I hurt you?” she asks, blue eyes wide in concern. 

Zuko just shakes his head and turns his head away from hers. She’s far too close. “No, you’re fine.” If he could just be as calm as her, now, that would be amazing. 

Her hands work at his ribs, gently pushing at the muscle and flushing the water into his skin, cool and soothing. He tries not to let a sigh escape as the pain slowly ebbs away, leaching out of him, but it’s too good. Her small, strong fingers press into the muscle more tightly there, working at the knots, and Zuko feels stress melting from his entire body. 

He tries not to, but he looks down at Katara’s hands. When she heals him, Zuko can’t help but hate firebending, just a little bit. Fire does more than just destroy, he knows that now, but his hands have never healed, not in the same way Katara’s have. They have not brought comfort and wiped away tears and cooked and cared, not in the same way hers has.

_ (evil and good are always at war inside you zuko, it is your nature, your legacy) _

Perhaps he is simply fascinated at how strong her hands are, how strong she seems to be. He raises his own hand and lays it over hers, pressing it harder into his ribs. He closes his eyes and sighs. “Thank you, Katara.” 

“It’s nothing,” she says, voice warm. Her fingers flex and finish healing one broken rib, before she moves onto the second one, the pain disappearing by the second. “Are you sure you’re ok, Zuko?” 

He nods. “I am. Aang needs to bend with more aggression. It’s good for firebending. I can take a few hits.” 

He turns to look at her and watch her gaze soften. It’s not pity, not quite, but she purses her lips. The water around her hands pulses and glows for one more bright second before she pulls it away and flicks it back into her flask. He misses the feeling of her hands on him immediately. 

She then reaches up and runs her hands through his hair, and all of a sudden, all he can think about is those hands framing his face, pulling him down, running down his torso and slipping around his waist to pull him closer, and he wants it so badly he feels it like a vicious bite in his stomach. 

She sighs, and her hand slips just a little bit, about to touch his scar, stopping a few centimeters away. She has been the only person he has ever let touch it, besides himself. And her touch feels more like a blessing than anything else he has ever felt. 

“I know you’re worried, Zuko,” she says softly. “But you have to have faith Aang will get it. He’s not an aggressive person by nature.” 

Zuko groans and tips his head back. The sun on his skin is a blessed feeling, just as much as the feather light touch of Katara’s hands on his jaw. “But firebending isn’t all aggression, Katara,” he says, trying to explain. “It’s about power. Fire is the only element that isn’t naturally occuring. Firebenders have to find the power within them, the spark the light their inner fire so that they can bend with it. Firebending is about purpose. You have to be  _ certain _ in what you are doing. You have to be able to feel the power in your body before it is even there.” He pauses, searching for the right words. “It’s a lot like earthbending, in that way. Both require great strength of will.” 

Katara’s quiet then. “You’re not sure Aang has that.” 

Zuko stares out onto the beach. “I can’t let myself think that way, Katara. If he doesn’t get this, then we’re screwed. He has to be able to get this.” 

“Why don’t you try telling him what you just told me? About certainty.” Her hands tighten on his shoulders, forcing him to look at her. “Zuko, I have faith in you. You can do this.” 

(can he? he has done nothing but fail his entire life, fail his uncle, fail his friends, fail his people, fail himself. zuko thinks that he can do nothing but fail sometimes)

His shoulders tense, and he closes his eyes before opening them to look into hers. “Thank you.” 

She squeezes his shoulders, and there’s a small reprieve from all the tenseness that is built up in those muscles. He swallows back a moan that bubbles into this throat at the feeling of her fingers digging into his back, because it feels far better than it should. And this is not the time to be thinking about this, but he can’t help it. 

Katara’s hands smooth over his skin, thumbs pressing firmly, and he sighs in relief. “You’re ridiculously tense, Zuko,” she says. 

He rolls his eyes. “I wonder why.” 

Katara smirks and tangles her fingers with his, thumb rubbing over the back of his hand in a soothing motion. “Come on. You can’t sit here forever.” 

He sighs and rubs the back of his neck with the hand not holding Katara’s. “I know.” He tugs her a little closer and grips her hand a little tighter. “But how about five more minutes?” 

She hums in agreement, and Zuko tries to forget the feeling of her hands on his body as he stares out into the ocean, but it's the exact same color as her eyes, and he’s holding her hand like it’s his last lifeline. 

Sometimes, it feels like it is. 

* * *

Is she drooling? She thinks she might be drooling. 

Katara swipes at her chin and is beyond grateful when no wetness is there, and squeezes her eyes shut to regain some semblance of control over herself. 

But she can’t help it, and she opens her eyes again to watch the way Zuko’s hands gently correct Toph’s stance, the soft way he touches her, so lightly. 

Her fingers twitch. Zuko’s hands are impossibly soft yet rough, and had he been anyone other than himself, Katara would have expected them to be soft, unworked, fragile and delicate, almost like porcelain. After all, he’s still a prince. 

But his hands are exactly like him, rough, and strong from hard work and discipline, yet impossibly gentle with those who need to be. She watches as Toph shifts into a firebending stance to approach earthbending with another way entirely, and she can’t help her laser-like focus on Zuko’s hands. 

Veins in the back of his hands shift as he gently corrects her, and Katara feels her face become flushed as she imagines those same hands tracing over her body, over her face, slipping into her hair and tilting her head up to kiss her. 

After Yon Rha, after her mother, she has realized that Zuko is not the enemy. Perhaps he never was. Perhaps all he was was someone she saw herself in, someone carrying around so much pain that it became a physical weight, a thorn in your side you didn’t know how to pull out. 

Zuko leaves Toph to her earthbending and comes to stand by Katara. “It’s nice of you to teach her,” she says quietly, trying to focus on anything other than his face. 

He crosses his arms, and she flicks her eyes away from the way his hands brush lightly against her arm as he does so. “Toph is the greatest earthbender in the world, and she’s only 12. Can you imagine how powerful she could be if she adapted the other bending styles into her bending?” 

Katara’s eyes meet his. “I guess I never expected you to be so gentle with her. I mean, you’re not with Aang.” 

He shrugs. “Toph’s not like Aang. She’s grounded, determined. I don’t have to be strict with her. Plus, what kind of asshole would I be if I wasn’t gentle with a twelve year old?” 

Katara notices he doesn’t mention the fact that Toph is blind, or that she is a girl, and her respect for him increases. That is part of Toph’s strength, not her weakness. 

Her eyes flicker to his hands once more, and she just manages to make out a pink scar running along the edge of his thumb. 

“Zuko!” she exclaims, pulling his hands away from his body, forcing him to stop watching Toph and look at her. She runs her hands over his, trying not to savor the feeling of her hand in his. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” 

It’s a small burn scar on his thumb, freshly pink, and it’s only about the length of her thumbnail and thin, but her heart aches. She hates the idea of any of her friends, her family, being hurt. Even if it is just a minor scar. 

Zuko blushes lightly, but makes no move to pull his hand from hers. “Um, it’s a small burn, so I didn’t think it was a big deal.” 

She shakes her head. “That’s no excuse, Zuko.” 

“It’s ok, Katara. I’ve survived worse,” he says softly. Protests die in her throat when he says this, and she looks up at him to see him watching Toph again. “Plus, it’s the price of being a firebender. You can hurt yourself a lot easier than with the other elements.” 

Katara turns his hands over and traces her fingers along the lines that mark his palm, soft. She has always been fascinated with hands, how they can heal and hurt, the power they hold to bind people together or rip them apart, but never has someone’s hands captivated hers as Zuko’s do. 

(but what does not captivate her about zuko? he is perhaps the greatest adventure she has ever been on, more secrets locked away than the entire world) 

Zuko gently pulls away from her and goes to correct Toph on a stance, and Katara sits back down and watches the easy, controlled grace of his movements, lingers on his hands. 

She imagines the way his strong fingers wrap around the hilt of his swords, the easy way he twirls the swords around his wrists, and she feels her face become flush and her heartbeat quicken. Zuko’s hands on her is something she very rarely lets herself think about, except in the cover of her bed at night, when she needs a release, and then they take the starring role in her fantasies. 

She wonders, if she were to place Zuko’s hands on her body, how would he touch her? She thinks that he would be gentle and soft, but even if he were to carve hot marks into her body, grip her waist so tightly my bruises would be left on her skin come morning, she would want it. She would want to touch him in any way she could, accept him in any way. Whatever he offers her, Katara will take it. 

She closes her eyes, futilely trying to fight off vivid images of him running his hands through her hand, tracing her cheek with his fingers, and her stomach aches with how much she wants it, how much she wants him to touch her, and touch and touch.

And there are less innocent images too, the way she images his mouth would curve into a wicked smile, the way she thinks her body would curve under his touch, the way his fingers would feel, slipping between her legs and into her, bringing her to the edge, more than once. 

Her face flushes and she buries her head in her knees, but it’s too late. Her mind runs with images she only lets herself think about in the privacy of her bedroom, the way Zuko’s pale skin would look against hers, the way she knows his hand would span the entire width of her back, the way he would trail his fingers along the curve of her waist before dipping lower, pressing into her and swallowing her moans with her mouth, 

_ Fuck, _ she’s surely going insane. Katara stands up suddenly and turns around to go back into the house.

But like a moth to a flame, she can feel Zuko’s gaze on the back of her neck, and she turns around to see him frowning as she walks away. She raises her hand in a goodbye, and she gives her a soft, if confused, smile, and nods. 

She turns around and runs her hand over her face, certain she’s certifiable, and determined to find the nearest cliff to throw herself off of. 

But she can’t shake the feeling of Zuko’s hand in hers. It fits perfectly. 

* * *

Zuko prides himself on being able to draw one of Katara’s smiles out of her. 

Usually, she offers them smaller ones, and they’re always laden with exhaustion, weariness leaching out from her very bones onto her face. Even most of Sokka’s jokes get nothing more than a small quirk of the lips every now and then. She’s not sad, by any means. Just preoccupied and busy, like the rest of them. 

Plus, she had hated him for most of the time they had known each other. So he thinks getting any sort of smile out of her is a victory, something he treasures and holds close to his heart. 

(he doesn’t mention how the smile she had on her face when he brought her father back is one of his most precious memories, locked behind a cabinet he rarely lets himself open)

But when she does smile, for him, it’s like the sun cracking open behind the clouds, and yes, he knows how stupid that sounds. 

But how else is he supposed to describe the easy way he relaxes when she smiles at him, the way her happiness seems to infect everyone else, making them happier as well? How is he supposed to tell her that he would do anything to make her happy, anything at all?

And so that’s how Zuko finds himself cooking dinner for the eighth night in a row, trying to give her some kind of a reprieve. 

Katara walks into the kitchen into the beach house to find him chopping lotus root, a pot of stew simmering on the counter. 

“Zuko!” she says, rushing over. “Are you cooking dinner again?” She puts her hands on her hips and glares at him, and he winces at her threatening gaze.

“Maybe?” he offers. She crosses her arms and peers at him, cross. 

“You’ve cooked dinner for a week, claiming that you miss cooking, and you haven’t told me why. At least let me help you out? You already do so much else to take care of everyone.” 

“No!” he snaps, and then instantly regrets it when her expression turns from annoyed to angry. He sighs, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry,” he says. Why does he have to be so  _ fucking _ awkward all the time? Iroh was great at talking to people, and one would think Zuko would manage to pick up on those skills after three years of constantly traveling together. “I’m sorry, Katara,” he says again, and her angry expression melts away. “I just wanted to help you.” 

She tilts her head and looks at him searchingly. “Why, Zuko?” she asks. 

“I just saw you working really hard, and I noticed that you hadn’t smiled in a while, and I thought it was because you were so tired from taking care of everyone and cooking as well, so I thought I would help you out a little bit. Just to give you a break. I mean, I’ve only been here for a little bit. I can’t imagine what it would have been like dealing with the rest of those guys 24/7, for months.” 

She blushes then, a pretty pink staining her skin, and he restrains himself from stabbing himself with the sharp knife in his hand when his mind drifts and wonders just how far that blush spreads across her body. “You noticed I didn’t smile?” 

_ Fuck. _ He rubs the back of his neck with his free hand, casting his eyes to the floor. “I mean, not like a creeper or anything. I don’t watch you or anything, just that you seemed a little quieter and you weren't laughing at Sokka’s awful jokes that you sometimes find funny, and I thought I could help in some way, and now that I think about it, it was a stupid idea,” he rambles, turning away from her and continuing to chop the root. 

He’s such an idiot, so dumb, so so dumb. Azula was right when she said he’d be nothing, and even now, even trying to help Katara out, he had to go and put his stupid foot in his mouth again. Why could he not even do something so simple, why was he—

A hand on his arm interrupts his self-beration, and he looks up to see Katara smiling at him. “Thank you, Zuko.” 

She takes the knife from him and pulls the lotus root towards her. “No one else has thought about helping me out, you know. I’ve always been the one to do the cooking and cleaning and washing up. It’s always been about Aang and his training or wherever Sokka wants to go or whoever Toph wants to scam next.” 

She pauses in her chopping of the root to look up at him with those blue, blue eyes, and offers him a blinding smile. “You’re the first person to think about helping me.” 

She’s quiet, but Zuko  _ feels _ his heart ache for her, which is a new and unusual thing. Sometimes he hates how long it took him to find his way to her, to Sokka and Aang and Toph and Suki, to his whole family, and how many people he hurt along the way. But he cannot change the past. Zuko knows this painful truth. 

But Katara looks up at him and gives him a smile, exactly the type of smile that Zuko has been wanting to see. 

(he doesn’t know it, but this is another moment that he will treasure, that he locks away in his heart and takes out when things get rough. this is where things truly shift between them)

He shrugs and waves his hand in the direction of the stove to cause the fire below the stew to die down a little bit. “I mean, it’s not a big deal, you don’t have to be too thankful, I just wanted to try to be helpful.” 

She laughs then, a full-bodied laugh, the kind that has been too few from her. “Zuko, just take the damn compliment and shut up.” 

He blushes then, his face flushing bright red, but he grins sheepishly at her. “But you’re not supposed to be doing any of the cooking.” 

Katara glances up at him. “Can I be honest with you?”    
  
“Always,” he says, and he’s probably a little more serious than needs to be, but he means it. 

“I missed cooking.”    
  
_ “Really?” _

“Don’t look so surprised. I’m just used to doing it, and not doing it for a whole week is fucking  _ weird. _ I find it kind of calming, actually. Just me and my thoughts. It does get tiresome, after a while, but I missed it.” 

Zuko rubs the back of his neck. “I just thought it was unfair how you had to clean up after everyone and cook for them.” 

She bumps her shoulder with his. “Why don’t we cook together?” 

His eyebrow shoots up into his hair. “You mean that?” 

“Why not?” she shrugs. “Clearly we’re the only two competant cooks here anyways.” 

Zuko nods. “Yeah. I’d like that.” 

The answering smile she gives him back makes all of this worth it. 

* * *

The thing is, Zuko doesn’t smile. 

Everyone knows this. Sokka has long given up getting anything out of him other than a smirk, and even Suki and Aang have relinquished their attempts to make the Fire Prince smile. He just doesn’t do that, Even if Zuko makes them all laugh frequently, with his dry humor and awkward attitude, he’s not the one to smile a lot. 

So when he does, Katara latches on to those precious moments like a gemstone she may never see again. 

Right now is one of those precious moments, and it’s been drawn out by perhaps the one person who can make Zuko smile reliably: Toph. 

Katara never expected Zuko and Toph to bond, but they have about the most unlikely of things: etiquette. They’re cackling as they exchange the most ridiculous rules for their nations back and forth, how the Fire Nation has apparently thirty-two different types of spoons, depending on the occasion, while the Earth Kingdom’s napkin folding is so specific one fold could mean deference or hostility. 

Well, Toph’s cackling as she relates the next in a string of unfortunate etiquette blunders to Zuko, but he’s smiling at her in a way that pulls at Katara’s heartstrings, in a way that makes her want to immortalize his face right now. He looks so young, so peaceful, so happy, and it kills her that she can’t make him feel like that all the time. 

Plus, she’s not the one saying it, or anything, but Zuko has an incredibly nice smile. Shy, and sweet, and perfect for softening the harsh angles of his face. It turns him from simply a handsome boy into a captivating one, and Katara cannot tear her eyes from his face as the smile on it grows. 

(and this is the moment that she falls for him. katara does not know this, will perhaps never know this, but this, this exact moment, is where her heart gives up fighting and surrenders itself to zuko)

At that very moment, Zuko looks over at her, and her entire face flushes the color of the morning sun, and she quickly looks back down, getting back to her laundry and hoping he’ll let it go. 

No such luck, for less than two minutes later, Zuko’s walking over to her, steps light as always. “Katara.” 

She doesn’t ignore Zuko, not anymore, and it is only this fact that makes her look up from her washing and at his eyes. She tries not to pout at the sight that his smile is gone.

“Is everything all right?” 

“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” 

‘You were looking at me and Toph. With like, kind of a weird look on your face.” 

Katara curses herself and all the spirits, and plasters on a fake smile. “Oh, nothing. It’s not a big deal.” 

Zuko doesn’t look convinced, and he raises an eyebrow to stare at her.

Fuck, she can’t lie to him anymore. She might as well admit it sooner rather than later. 

“Ok,” she admits. “I was thinking that it was nice to see you smiling.” 

Clearly, this is the last thing on the planet Zuko is expecting, because twin blushes spot his cheeks as he stares at her. Katara tries not to let the same blush flush her own cheeks, and tilts her chin up a little higher, making her seem far more confident than she actually is. “You—you were looking at me smiling?” 

“Oh, stop it,” she snaps, embarrassed and lashing out. “It’s not a big deal.” 

What she doesn’t expect is for hurt to flicker over Zuko’s face, so quickly she thinks she might have imagined it, but she’s certainly not imagining the way his whole face shuts down, shuttering into a calm yet detached expression that she immediately detests with every bone in her body. “Right. Of course. Not a big deal,” he parrots back, and then turns to leave.

“Wait,” she calls. Zuko freezes and turns around, and she sighs, bending the water out of the finished laundry quickly so she can fold it. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Zuko simply peers at her for a moment before sitting across from her, taking a blue tunic she recognizes as Sokka’s and folding it neatly. “It’s fine.” 

She shakes her head. “No, Zuko, it’s not. I didn’t mean to be mean. I just meant—” she breaks off, embarrassed at what she’s about to say, but soldiers on nonetheless. “You have a nice smile, that’s all. And you don’t smile very often.” 

Zuko looks anywhere but in her eyes, focusing intently on folding a pair of Aang’s pants, far more diligent than he needs to be. “I never thought I had much to smile about, honestly.” 

Katara’s heart breaks right then and there. She could ask for a million years, and she would never get to the bottom of Zuko’s pain, but god, if she doesn’t know someone who deserves it less. 

There are some hurts she simply cannot heal. 

“You do now, Zuko,” she says softly. He has her, and Toph and Aang and Sokka and Suki. He has a family, and she wants nothing more than for him to be happy, to be so happy he cannot take it anymore. 

“Did you smile a lot as a kid?” 

If possible, he quiets more, staring at the ground instead of at her. Zuko has always been reticent, to say the least, but this, this is more than simple silence. She can tell he is lost in his thoughts, that there is very real, very sharp pain behind every single one of the words he is about to say. 

“Only when my mother was around.” 

Oh. Zuko  _ never _ mentions his mother, not even when he had joined her to hunt down the man who killed hers. Katara barely knows anything about her, simply that the Fire Nation had stolen her from Zuko much like it had stolen her mother from her. 

And this, god, this Katara knows. There are very few pains in the world like losing a mother, and if she knows anything about Zuko, and anything about his father, she can only imagine just how much his mother must have meant to him to make him into the person Katara knows he is today. And she doesn’t want to push, but the thought of Zuko hurting hurts her more than she thought possible, a knife ripping at her heart with a jagged edge. 

“Was she funny?” she asks, and then winces. Bringing up his mother was like pouring salt in the wound for Zuko. 

But Zuko doesn’t seem to be offended. “No,” he says softly. “Not funny. But kind. And beautiful.” 

He looks up at her, and he gives her a smile tinged with sadness. “I think she might have wanted me to smile more, though.” 

Katara has nothing to say back to that, so she simply offers him a smile of her own. And she hopes with every fiber of her soul that Zuko knows she understands. That he knows his smiles are worth everything to her, to all of them.

She swears, she will make his smiles flow freely once more. 

* * *

Her eyes are the exact same color as the ocean. 

This is the very first thing Zuko realizes about Katara, back at the beginning of everything, the color of her eyes. 

How could he not? They’re bluer than the sky, the same color of the ocean in the back of his memories, the ocean off of the shore of Ember Island. 

Katara’s eyes are the same color of the ocean, and just like the ocean, there is a storm lurking underneath the calm surface. Like the sea, she does not like to be restrained. Zuko thinks it a foolish man (or woman), the person who tries to restrain her. He has more than a few scars from trying to do it himself. He’s learnt his lesson. 

Right now, her eyes are watching Aang run through waterbending forms critically, scanning for flaws in his stance, and even if she is not looking at him, Zuko cannot help but focus on her eyes. 

She shows  _ everything _ through her eyes, so much pain and happiness and emotion. They say the eyes are the window to the soul, but Katara, Katara’s eyes are like a portal into her past. She holds so much pain and love and tragedy behind them, and Zuko has seen some of that pain, the darkest parts of her soul. 

He drags a stick through the dirt, attempting to focus himself on the invasion, how it will go, but he can’t help but glance back up at Katara. 

She calls out a correction to Aang before glancing over at him, and for a second, her eyes lock with his. 

(he feels like she can see parts of his soul he didn’t even know existed, parts that he himself has not uncovered)

She offers him a brief, shaky smile before turning her focus back on Aang, and Zuko curses himself as he rises. He makes his way to the ocean to think, but it doesn’t help that once he stares out at it, all he can think of is Katara. 

The invasion is coming, and Zuko cannot think what he will do if he loses any of them. They are his family, his soul, all he has left, and he knows there is far too good of a chance that none of them will make it out alive. 

He will lay his life down for any of them. 

Zuko draws in a ragged breath and closes his eyes, folding his legs in a meditative pose, but unsurprisingly, it doesn't help. He’s found it harder and harder to meditate lately, preoccupied. 

There is a weight, dragging him down, and sometimes he thinks that letting it sink him is the best he can do. Because there is so much left, so much to be done, and he wants to freak out just thinking about it. 

(he doesn’t know this yet, but zuko is this world’s atlas, holding everything up on his shoulders, the steady hand that keeps the world in check)

But what can he do other than breathe, and look out at the ocean, looking for some comfort? He always finds comfort in Katara, in the color of her eyes, even as his heart aches when looking at her at the same time. 

He will never be truly happy. Zuko cannot have her, not in this universe, at least, and this is one thing he will not let himself have, no matter how badly he wants it. She is not his to want. She is not anyone’s to want, but he has no choice. 

He does not get to put himself first anymore. 

Zuko groans and buries his face in his hands. Thinks of white ice and crystal caves, thinks of necklaces and trees and a hand, pulling another onto a sky bison. 

“Zuko?” 

He lifts his head out of his hands to find Katara standing behind him, the set of her mouth worried. 

“Are you alright?” 

He swallows roughly, tries to nod and say yes, but he’s frozen, can’t do anything. And Katara knows what he wants, has always known what he wants, and so she sits next to him, hair blowing in the wind. 

She says nothing, but takes his hand in hers, locks eyes with him. 

And Zuko has been at sea for three years, has swam in waters crystal clear, knows storms like the back of his hand, but he has never seen a storm quite like the one Katara keeps hidden in her soul. 

She stares at him, and somehow, this quiets his heart, helps it stop from pumping so fast and fierce he is afraid it will beat right out of his chest. 

Katara is the only one who has seen both sides of his past. She is the only one who knows about both sides of his face. 

“Avatar Roku is my great-grandfather,” he says. 

He’s not sure where the words come from, or why the hell he chooses to say them right now, but no one, no one in the world knows this aside from him, Iroh, and his father. And perhaps his mother. 

Katara’s eyes widen, and her mouth drops open. 

“Avatar Roku, as in, the Avatar before Aang?” 

He nods. Her eyes, just keep looking into her eyes, he reminds himself. 

To her credit, Katara doesn’t seem too ruffled, outwardly. She simply closes her mouth and continues to stare right back at him. “When did you find out?” 

“A long time ago. Before the eclipse. And I still waited so long, even knowing who my family was.” 

“You are not responsible for your ancestors, Zuko,” Katara says, and he is surprised at the amount of conviction in her voice, the steel she holds. “For a long time, I thought you were. I thought you and the entire Fire Nation had to pay for all the sins you committed, the damage you inflicted.” 

She grips his hand tightly. “I was wrong. You are not responsible for their actions, Zuko. Only your own.” 

“But I  _ do _ have a responsibility, Katara.” He doesn’t know how to tell her, how to express what he is feeling, only that he can try. 

Only with Katara does he let himself stumble. 

“I have to fix this. Even if I am not responsible for my actions, I have a responsibility to the world. It is who I am. I was born to stop this.” 

She is quiet then, and sometimes Zuko feels like he can look into her eyes and see years of her past, and other times, he is reminded he knows almost nothing. 

(like the sea, zuko reminds himself. those who think they understand it never truly do)

“Maybe you were, Zuko. I don’t know what you were born for.” Katara stops and he finds himself falling into her eyes, the one safe space he knows he can always go to. “But you cannot let yourself carry their guilt as well. You are going to let it kill you if you do.” 

He doesn’t let her know that he feels so much guilt, it chokes him every day, threatens to overwhelm him so he cannot breathe. Zuko does not know how to do anything but shoulder the burdens of his sins. 

Soon, though, he will learn not all burdens need be carried alone. 

* * *

Zuko’s eyes seem to glow in the low campfire. Katara’s having a hard time focusing on anything but them, the way they seemed to be the exact color of the fire at times, and the way they seemed to give even more light than the fire. 

Zuko adds a log to the fire and waves his hand to make it crackle brighter. Everyone else had gone to bed, so it was just the two of them, her quietly mending clothes while Zuko sharpens his swords. 

She tries not to think about how peaceful the silence was, how safe she felt with Zuko by her side. 

Instead of focusing on her mending, though, she stares at the way Zuko’s long,  _ long _ lashes seem to glow from the firelight, the way his eyes gleam. 

Katara has never seen eyes like Zuko’s, eyes that hold so much pain, so much history, so much tragedy. It has been something she has been haunted by, ever since she first met him. 

(sometimes, in her dreams, she sees his eyes looking at her, eyes that are not narrowed in anger but wide and sad, eyes that pierce into her soul and shake her to her very core)

“Ow!” she says. She pulls the needle out of her finger and watches a drop of blood oroze to the top, crimson. Zuko lifts his gaze when she cries out in pain, and his gaze instantly falls to her finger. 

“Are you alright?'' he asks softly. 

She shakes her head. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.” She summons a little bit of water from her flask and soothes it over the injury, the blood vanishing and skin stitching back together. There’s not even a little scar left. 

Zuko stares at her while she heals, transfixed by the motion, and he wets his lips as he watches the water glow faintly. 

Katara’s so mesmerized by his face that she accidentally lets the water splash to the ground as soon as it’s finished healing her finger, startling both of them. 

Zuko looks up at her, locking his eyes with her. 

(there is a war going on behind his eyes, a battle that katara knows she will never know all the secrets to. sometimes it seems like zuko himself is the war, evil and good at odds inside of him, and he is a cataclysmic event that irrevocably changes the world. he is the war, and he will destroy all those who stand in his path)

“Can I ask you something?” he says softly. 

She nods, unable to say anything. 

“When we were searching for Yon Rha……” he hesitates. “What did you do to that Fire Nation captain?” 

Katara’s honestly surprised he didn’t ask her sooner, but when she thinks about it, she understands. Zuko never pushes. Unlike everyone else, he doesn’t force her. He lets her come to him.

She swallows roughly. “Bloodbending. It’s something I learned from—from another waterbender. And I swore I’d never do it again after what happened with the captain. It’s wrong and evil and horrible.” 

Zuko nods. But she can tell, behind his eyes, there is a lurking question there. 

(if eyes are the window to the soul, then zuko’s are the curtain covering his past. katara can see just barely through them, just a small hint into the boy he used to be, the tragedy he has lived through, but she cannot understand it, not until he opens himself up to her)

“I get why you think it’s wrong and evil, Katara,” he says, “but don’t you ever think about how it could be used for good?”

She stares at him. “Zuko, I’m taking someone’s body and using it  _ against _ them. Nothing else does that. It’s—it’s practically murder.” 

Zuko reaches over and grabs her finger, turns it over and brushes his fingers over the spot where she pricked herself. “All I can think about is how many people you can heal with this. How many lives you can save. I mean, you can manipulate  _ blood. _ Do you know how helpful you would be on a battlefield? The number of lives that you’d save?”

She has never thought of it that way, and it’s so obvious the thought nearly knocks her over. She is a warrior first, a fighter, and it is ingrained in her bones, but god, she can already see that Zuko is a ruler. All he thinks about is others. 

Zuko lets her hand drop, but she keeps staring into his eyes. 

Zuko’s eyes anchor her in a way nothing else has. When he looked at her when they were on their way back from Yon Rha, when she had blown up at him, even so far back as the crystal caves, Zuko’s eyes have followed her around the world and brought her back to herself. He has seen her anger, her pain, and he has done nothing but offer a comforting hand, offer understanding and try to take away her pain, just a little. There has been no one else who has done that for her. 

Zuko is the only one who has seen into the darkest parts of her soul, and accepted them. 

If he is war then, she decides, it must be easy for him to look at her darkness and accept it. She cannot imagine what darkness must coil in him at times. 

Katara raises a trembling hand and brushes back a lock of hair, trying to keep her shaking to a minimum, but no matter what she does, she can’t seem to pull her gaze from Zuko’s, staring into his eyes. 

(even when she closes her eyes, she sees zuko’s. she sees his eyes, staring back at her, waiting for an answer, an answer she doesn’t have)

“No. I didn’t.” 

“You’re not the only bender to hate their own bending, at times, Katara. But to hate your own bending is to hate a part of yourself. We can’t hate ourselves. Then that hate becomes a sickness that we push onto the rest of the world. The least you can do is try to give ourselves some kindness.” 

“Have you managed to figure it out?” 

Zuko’s mouth twists up in a wry smirk. “No. Not really.” 

And Katara understands, because just as she feels Zuko understands her, she understands Zuko. They cannot take their powers away, and so they must make sure they always do more good with them than harm. 

Zuko then pulls his gaze from Katara’s, and she feels the weight of his gaze slipping away from her like a hot poultice being removed from a wound, soothing and painful all at the same time. He looks into the fire, jaw clenched, and waves his hand. The fire dies down until it is nothing more than glowing embers, shadows playing over the lines of his face. 

Spirits, he is handsome. Glowing amber eyes and angled features, Katara can’t help but notice it even now. 

“Just remind yourself, Katara. It’s the intention behind a tool that makes it evil or good. Not the tool itself.” 

She swallows past a lump in her throat and nods, even though she knows he can’t see her. But he is so in tune with her he understands. 

She watches his eyes, watches him close them and open them, full of more pain than she has ever seen them. She reaches out and curls a hand around his shoulder, and Katara must shove down the urge to wrap her arms around him and bury her face into his neck. 

“Thank you, Zuko.” 

The corner of his mouth quirks up sadly, and he looks over at her. It is still in his eyes, agony, the suffering that she knows must be caked on like layers of mud, that must be branded into his very bones, carved into his very soul, but Katara does not know how to ease him of this burden. 

(like a war, zuko’s scars are more than just physical. katara cannot imagine what sort of scars the battle, the war inside of him has left on his soul, scars that he will never let anyone see. like war, katara decides, zuko leaves a mark wherever he goes)

Especially when Zuko has eased her burden, she feels like a failure more than ever. But Katara will have to learn a painful truth, something she will struggle to come to terms with, and that is that there are simply some things that cannot be healed. 

All she can do is look him in the eyes and hope that being here is enough to help. 

* * *

All things considered, Katara’s sure she can’t be entirely to blame for what happens. There was only so much a girl could take before she would break. 

But honestly, you’d think she’d get used to it by now. 

This time, she finds Zuko in the dead of night, when he should be at his weakest. She can feel the power thrumming through her veins, seeping out from her veins into her muscles, and they ache for a showdown. 

Flames arc from his palms, and Katara licks her lips at the sweat beading down his body. Her eyes trail down his form, at the muscles that shift like waves under the water of his skin, visible through his sweat soaked undershirt. He reminds her of a statue, of a god. 

He’s only in the courtyard, barely away from the house, so she shouldn’t be surprised when he suddenly stops bending and locks eyes with her, just as her gaze moves up from the ridges of his shoulders to his jawline. 

Katara feels her cheeks burn red, and tears her eyes from his face instantly. Instead she focuses on the hollow of his throat, how it heaves as he sucks in lungfuls of air. All those fantasies she suffocated at the Western Air Temple come roaring back, only made more enticing now that she knows who Zuko is, what he is like. 

She wants to map his whole body out with her fingers and tongue, wants to burn every inch of him into her memory. 

As much as she hates to admit it, the clock is winding down, and she’ll take any moment with Zuko that she can get, any slivers of happiness and privacy she can carve out. 

She blinks then, and Zuko is standing in front of her, barely a foot away. Sweat plasters his hair to his cheeks, and she swallows roughly as he flexes his hand at his hip. There is a look in his eyes, something that speaks of desire and craving, of a want and hunger that she can barely understand. 

She is sure the same look is in her eyes. 

Katara’s hand twitches at her side, and she licks her lips, throat dryer than the Si Wong Desert, Zuko’s gaze falls to her lips, and then back up to her eyes, and  _ shit, _ she definitely understands the look in his eyes now. Instead of the moon’s power coursing through her veins now, Katara feels another power entirely, one that makes her head spin, heady, like a drug. 

Before she can say or do anything, Zuko surges forward. His hands curl around her neck, and then he’s tilting her head upward so her eyes can lock with his. 

Katara doesn’t waste a second more, and then she reaches up as well, hands digging into his hair like she’d fantastized for months, and she pulls his head downward to press his lips against hers. 

She now knows the answer to so many of those questions that had been plaguing her for weeks. He kisses her back instantly, and Zuko is not gentle in the way he kisses her, all fire and passion, ferocity seeping out of him, the insistent press of his lips against hers. 

His hands are not gentle either, not in the way they carve hot trails into her skin as he drags them down her body, and even though the night is cool, Katara suddenly feels overheated, oppressive heat sticking to the back of her neck. 

Zuko presses his body closer to hers, and before Katara knows what is happening, he hoists her up, and her legs wrap around his waist naturally, ankles crossing at the small of his back. The motion makes Katara gasp in surprise, but Zuko just takes advantage of it and slips his tongue into her mouth. 

The feel of his tongue brushing against hers only fuels her want, and she wraps her legs around his waist tighter, like she had dreamed about. 

It is better than she thought it would be, the way the silky strands of black hair fall against her fingers, the methodical way that Zuko kisses her, like he is trying to figure out what she likes best, the feeling of his body between her legs, the sharp planes of his cheekbones cutting into her palms. 

Katara feels something smack against her back, and suddenly, the door to the house is swinging open, and he stumbles in, still kissing her. He sets her on the kitchen table before breaking the kiss, and Katara nearly  _ whimpers _ before she realizes he’s begun tracing the line of muscle down her neck with his tongue. 

Her eyes slip shut in delirium, and she can scarcely do anything but dig her hands into his waist and focus on the tight grip that Zuko’s fingers have on her waist now. Because her top leaves a little bit of bare skin before her pants, his fingers are right on her skin, and she wonders if there’s a flame on them, because he feels like he’s branding her, marking her. 

Zuko maps out the curve of her neck with his tongue and teeth, dragging his teeth down the column of her neck, and she sighs, hair spilling to one side as she tilts her head. He presses a soft kiss to the underside of her jaw before sucking there, and Katara tries to focus enough to speak. 

“No marks,” she gasps.

Zuko hums against her skin, but he doesn’t seem to care much about that, if the way he lightly bites at her skin is any indication. She tries to tell him again, but then his tongue traces a swirling pattern up from her collarbone to her throat, and he sucks at the small bit of skin just underneath her ear, and the words evaporate from her tongue. 

He traces valleys and forests, silk roads and mountains, lakes and ancient cities onto her skin, like an explorer searching for heaven. 

She can barely pull herself together enough to push him off of her, because if she didn’t, they were going to end up fucking in the kitchen, and while that was  _ definitely _ something she was interested, not while there were four other people in the house and at any moment, one of them could wake up and find them. 

Zuko stumbles back when she pushes him off of her, confusion marring his features, but she hops off of the kitchen table and links her fingers with his. “Not here.” 

The confused look on his face morphs into a smirk, and Katara wants to kiss that smirk off, so she does, tugging him closer to her and pressing a hard kiss to his lips. When she pulls away, she feels a shot of pride spear through her at the dazed look in his eyes, 

She leads him to her room, and he instantly presses her up against the door the second it’s shut behind them, mouth crashing down onto hers again. 

She struggles to kiss him back while locking the door, but she manages to do so, leaving her hands free to card through his hair and touch, touch,  _ touch. _

Zuko’s hands slip from her jawline down her neck, and his fingers brush over her collarbone. He doesn’t seem to want to go any further, so Katara breaks the kiss to drag her lips over his cheek and whisper in his ear, “Zuko,  _ please.” _

This is what finally spurs him into action, and suddenly his hands are smoothing over the skin underneath her top, fingers brushing at the underside of her bindings, almost reverently. 

And Katara knows she is powerful, knows she is talented, but she has never felt so worshipped as she does here in Zuko’s arms. She follows the corded muscle of his throat with her tongue like she had dreamed about, feels it shift underneath her mouth as he swallows, and suddenly he’s wearing far too much clothing. 

Zuko pulls away from her mouth to dip down and lave at the skin of her collarbone, nipping at it, and Katara tries to not slump against the door. She allows him a little time to suck what she’s sure will become a deep purple mark into her collarbone before pushing him off of her. 

She heaves a breath and takes in the sight in front of her, Zuko, lips swollen, hair even more a wreck than usual, shirt just rucked up the tiniest bit so a sliver of pale skin is showing. She definitely looks the same. 

“This,” she says, tapping on his shirt. “Off.” 

Zuko’s cheeks pinken the slightest bit, but he complies with her request, peeling the undershirt off. Katara winds her hands around his waist and pulls him closer to her, forehead touching hers. His hands ghost over her own hips as well, and then suddenly, he’s pushing down her pants, letting them spill on the floor. 

And she breathes him in, the smell of sweat and something that smells just like  _ Zuko, _ impossible to describe. She always thought he’d smell like smoke, like the crumbling embers of a fire, but instead he smells of hard work, and of salt, like the sea that crashes on the beach. 

He doesn’t wait any longer for her, though, and he kisses her, effectively stopping her train of thought. However, she still has some mental faculties in order so she can run her hands over his skin, touching like she has wanted for ages. 

Zuko’s hands trail up her back to where her top is tied together, and he pulls at the ties, letting the satin slip off of her body. His hands move from her back to where they splay over her skin, and god, his hands are even better than she imagined. 

She pulls away from him and pushes him away from her. “The bed,” she gasps, chest heaving. 

Zuko simply walks backwards and sits on the bed, staring up at her like she is the moon, and despite how self conscious she feels, she gives him a warm smile and steps forward. She swings one leg over his waist and straddles him, and his hands instantly brush her hair back from her face as it falls to cover them. 

“Pretty,” he whispers. 

She jerks slightly in shock, pulling back from him. “What?” 

Zuko’s skin doesn’t pinken now, but blooms red, cheeks flushing brighter than she has ever seen them. “Uh—I mean,” he stops, sighing. “You’re beautiful, Katara,” he says. And although it’s a sweet confession, the way Zuko says it is more like a begrudging admission that she’s torn out of him. 

She laughs, though, because it’s Zuko, and there’s an undeniable hint of sweetness behind his words. She presses her lips to his, giddy, threading her hands through his hair. 

He kisses her back while tracing patterns down her back with his fingers, and she was right about his fingers, all callused and hot, and every time his skin brushes over hers, she  _ swears _ lightning is crackling underneath her skin. 

But she can only take more of his teasing touches for so long, and thankfully, his hands slip under her bindings to unwrap it from her body. The cloth slips from her skin, and Zuko pulls it away and tosses it on the floor. 

He never stops kissing her, not once. 

His fingers ghost over her breasts, and she gasps into his mouth. He  _ smirks, _ the fucking asshole, and does it again, and she can’t help but bury her face in his neck. Her entire body is overwhelmed, oversensitized at the feeling of his hands on her skin, and it's like he’s calling a symphony out of her skin, a conductor. Zuko knows her body, and he plays it like a song. 

He rubs his thumbs over the peaks of her breasts, and she bites the curve of his neck in retaliation, delighting in the way he bucks against her. 

She then lets herself touch, like she’s wanted to, like she’s craved to. Her fingers start at his shoulders, and press insistently into the firm muscle there. He sighs into her mouth, and she files away that information for  _ later. _ Her fingers then trail down his chest, tracing the lines of sinewy muscle, and as he lifts his arms to run them through her hair, the muscle underneath her palm shifts, and she swallows a moan in her throat. She wants to follow the trail of her hands with her mouth, desperately so, and so she pushes him backwards onto the bed. 

He falls back with a surprised look on his face, but as she climbs over him, his hands brush up the sides of her body as she presses a kiss to the hollow of this throat. 

She feels his hand curve around the back of her neck, and she knows he’s pulling her up for a kiss, but she pushes against his hand and slips further, dragging her tongue down his chest. 

Zuko groans. “Katara,” he says, voice wrecked, and she smirks into his skin. 

“What?” she asks, her tongue tracing the pecs of his chest, the dips and valleys. His skin is salty, and she traces her fingers over his navel as she works her way down, pressing kisses and sucking a mark into his skin, sure that it will bloom purple later. 

When she finally reaches his navel, he’s impossibly hard beneath her hand, and she’s about to untie his trousers and go further when Zuko suddenly shifts and pulls her back up to his face, dragging his hands through her hair to push it back and kiss her. 

The force of the kiss sends her mind reeling, and Zuko’s skillful fingers are only making the matter worse. He sets her soul ablaze, and she wonders if her thirst for him will ever be quenched. 

Before she knows it, however, Zuko is pushing her backwards, body curving over her as he lays her back against the sheets of the bed. He trails his lips from her mouth to her cheek and down to her collarbone, sucking another mark into the skin just above her breast. 

“My turn,” he says, looking up at her. And it’s dark in her room, but there’s just enough light, given by the solitary candle on her nightstand, to see the way his eyes glow, mischief dancing in them. 

Zuko takes his time kissing his way down her body, to her frustration. She whines and arches her back, gripping his hair. “Zuko.” 

“Patience, Katara,” he says, sucking a mark into the side of her breast. And she wants to be patient, she really does, but she craves him like a glutton, needs him to touch her and bring her to the edge, to toss her off of it and give her the release he holds in his hands. 

Thankfully, then, Zuko wraps his lips around her nipple and brushes his tongue over it, and she was right about being oversensitized, because the feeling rushes through her, heady and potent in its fervency, and she keens, a little shocked at the way the dynamic pleasure settles in her lungs. 

He flicks his tongue over her nipple and drags his teeth against it, and his fucking ruthless fingers come up to play with her other breast, twisting the peak between his two fingers and plucking at it. The pleasure is so forceful it slams into her, taking her breath away, and she hopes Zuko will not let her languish here forever, will not drag her torture out. 

Her hands fist at her sides, bunching the sheets of her bed in them as she closes her eyes and catches her breath, and soon the burning bliss of his mouth on her body begins to recede, into something more manageable, a slow burn that every cell in her body feels. 

Soon, though, he pulls away from her breast and his fingers trail away, but he doesn’t stop kissing her, pressing soft, soft kisses down her navel, hands following in their wake. 

Zuko’s hands are things of beauty, the way the calluses drag over her flushed skin, the way they call a whole composition of sounds from her mouth, he touches her like he was born to, like he was meant to, and Katara doesn’t let herself think about how well he knows her, and what that means for them. 

Suddenly, Zuko’s hands are pulling at her bindings, fingers tugging at the strands of cloth covering her hips and dragging them down. 

“What—what are you doing?” she asks, raising herself up on her elbows to look down at him. The previous experience she had wasn’t….the greatest, to say the least, and Jet had no interest in anything resembling foreplay when they had met. So the fact that Zuko was doing whatever he was doing was more than a little unnerving.

Zuko looks up at her. “You’ve never…?” he trails off, obviously finding the answer to his question in her face. 

He pushes himself up her body and slips a hand behind her head, bringing it up to his lips in a kiss. Unlike all their kisses before, this one is soft, reassuring, and she finds herself kissing him back with more tenderness than she expected. 

He pulls away and looks her in the eyes, something she finds far too comforting. “Trust me.” 

She nods, heart in her throat, running her hands down the side of his face, thumbs stroking his cheeks. She’s very much in danger of losing her heart, losing more of herself to Zuko than she thought. 

He’s back down at her navel and pulls her bindings away, fingers brushing reverently over her hip. He leans forward and places a small kiss next to her navel, and then another one a little further down and to the side, until he’s mapped a trail from her navel to her hip, fingers curling around to the back of her thighs. 

It’s surprisingly sweet, something she would have never thought of the Fire Prince, but as she’s beginning to learn very quickly, Zuko is far sweeter and more genuine than he lets on. 

But then, all of that sweetness vanishes as soon as he shrugs her legs over his shoulders and puts his mouth on her cunt. 

She chokes on her breath, and immediately her hands go to his hair, gripping it so tight she thinks she might pull out a few of the strands. His tongue strokes a path up her slit, curling at the end, and it catches her clit, and Katara can hardly breathe, overtaken. Zuko thrusts his tongue into her, her cunt so tight and hot and wet that the feeling of his tongue there is too much for her to handle and she cries, writhing under his grasp. He pulls her cunt closer to his mouth with his hands, and she bucks against him, feeling like her body is on fire, so fucking gone on the pleasure that he’s giving her she doesn’t even realize that a moan tears itself from her throat until she feels Zuko smirk against her. He pushes his mouth even closer to her cunt, if that’s possible, fucks her rougher and harder and more viciously with his tongue.

This is pleasure like Katara has never felt before, violent and vicious in the way it feels like it is tearing her apart, almost agonizingly painful in its intensity, and yet, she hungers for more, ravenous. 

When he closes his lips around her clit and hums, she very nearly shrieks, only managing to tamper down the sound at the last second, slickness gushing out of her at the feeling of those vibrations radiating through her cunt. 

He detaches his mouth from her and she fucking whines, tugs at his hair, but when she looks down and his eyes connect with hers, fucking hell, it’s one of the hottest things she’s ever seen. 

“You taste so good,” he whispers, flicking his tongue out to just brush against her slit once more. Her skin pinkens then, splashing over her body, and the praise falling from his lips does more for her than she thought it would. 

“And you’re beautiful,” he says, tracing his fingers over her hip. “I’m glad you were ready to forgive me.” 

Tears prickle at the corner of her eyes now, and she wants to reach up and pull him closer to her, kiss him and kiss him and kiss him, make sure that he knows he is worth everything, that he had  _ earned _ her forgiveness, something no one else ever had. 

But as she opens her mouth to reassure him, to tell him that he is one of the best people she knows, he taps at her clit light enough to send another shockwave through her body. “And so responsive,” he mutters. 

Zuko then flicks his tongue over her cunt against, thrusting his tongue back in, when he opens his mouth wide so he won’t miss a drop, his lips sliding, catching just before her clit, and strokes her walls, brushing against that spot that makes her entire vision go white, building her up, hurtling her towards the edge, she swears she will die, that her mind will shatter. She’s so overpowered by him she doesn’t even realize that she’s pushing her cunt into his mouth, pressing herself harder against him. 

But when Zuko spears his tongue back into her, rubbing against her walls and twisting his tongue just so, she falls apart, thighs trembling at his ears.

She has brought herself pleasure before, quick and largely unsatisfying, rubbing at herself beneath the covers and trying to avoid waking anyone up. But she can’t hold back now, as colors explode beyond her shut eyelids and her back arches like a bow, string pulling her body taut. It consumes her, like the way the waves consume rocks, batter at them in the middle of a storm, and it takes her a few minutes to come crashing down from this high, a high unlike anything she has ever felt before. 

She opens her eyes to find Zuko gently stroking the curve of her hip, rubbing it with his thumb as he looks at her. His eyes are soft, warm amber, and when he speaks his voice is hoarse and quiet. “We don’t have to go any further, Katara. If you don’t want to.” 

Katara reaches for him and pulls him closer, pressing her hands to his cheeks and brushing her lips against his, lightly. “I want, Zuko. Of course I want to.” 

He still looks a little uncertain as he pulls away. “I know. It just hurts for most women, the first time, doesn’t it?” 

She nervously runs her tongue across her lip. “That’s true. And you’d have a right to be worried. If this was my first time.” 

Zuko stares at her comically, and even though it’s a serious confession, Katara has to bite her lip to hold back the peal of laughter that threatens to escape. 

“You mean, before?’ he asks, face twisted so adorably she can’t help but chuckle. 

She nods. “Yes.” 

Zuko, unexpectedly then, pouts. “Was he any good?” 

Katara throws her head back and laughs loudly now. “Zuko, are you  _ jealous?” _ All the answer she needs is given by the pinking of his cheeks, the way he averts his gaze shyly. Katara shakes her head. “Not as good as you.” 

She’s sure this’ll stroke his ego, but he deserves it, after what he just did to her. 

And stroke his ego it does.

Zuko raises an eyebrow, and drags his hands down her body, curling around her hips. “Really?” he leans in and presses a kiss to her pulse point, hand ghosting up to brush against the underside of her breast. “And how much better  _ am _ I?” 

Katara rolls her eyes. “I am not going to tell  _ you,” _ she tries to say, but the last part is broken when his fingers slip between her thighs and stroke her, voice cracking as the sudden, fierce pleasure wracks her body. 

Zuko hums. “Very well, then. I’m sure I can drag it out of you.” Mischief dances in his eyes, almost dangerous and wicked, but she can only feel the beat of her heart quicken at his promise. 

He slips two of those damned amazing fingers inside of her, and god, it’s everything she’s wanted. “Tell me, Katara,” he asks, fingers now rubbing insistently inside her. “How much better am I?” 

She digs her fingers into his biceps, head spinning. Even his other hand simply resting on her hip seems to feel on fire, senses dialed up to 11 and body completely at mercy to his whims. She buries her head in his neck, unable to give him any sort of a response. 

“I asked a question, Katara,” Zuko says again, shifting his fingers around so he can press his thumb against her clit. “How much better am I?” 

She grapples with the words, tries to find something to say. “He never made me feel good,” she chokes out, eyes squeezed shut as his pace begins to pick up. She bucks against his hand, chasing release, but barely restrains a frustrated yell when he slows down. 

“I need you to be more specific, Katara,” Zuko asks, and  _ fuck, _ his voice, all commanding and stern, should not be a turn on for her, but it most certainly is, and she’s desperate to give him anything he wants, so she can get some release in return. 

“He never made me come,” she rasps, “not like you did, Zuko.” She opens her eyes to find him staring down at her, face entirely different, smirk gone. 

“Say that again,” he whispers. 

“He never made me come.” 

“Not that,” he corrects. “My name. Say my name.” As if to emphasize his point, he picks up the pace of his fingers, so blindingly fast it seems as though the breath is being stolen right out from her lungs. 

She heaves, straining to keep her eyes open, locked with his, and when his thumb brushes over her clit, she can’t take anymore, and she digs her nails into his arms.  _ “Zuko!” _

This orgasm isn’t as intense as her first one, yet it envelopes her all the same, settling into her bones with a smooth sort of warmth, relaxing her muscles. She wants to curl up underneath the covers with him and sleep, stay in this room forever, freeze time and take every single second of the day to explore every single inch of his skin. 

Before she even opens her eyes, she feels his lips on hers, and she kisses him back. God, as addicting as it was having sex with Zuko, kissing him was addictive in another way entirely. 

She takes advantage of the way Zuko melts into the kiss to let him lower his guard, hand slipping into her hair and he kisses her and kisses her, and Katara  _ just _ manages to retain enough mental faculties to wait for the right moment. 

She knows she’s found it when both of his hands tral up her body, one at her waist and the other buried in her hair, tilting her head back so he can kiss her more. She doesn’t hesitate for a second, swinging her legs over his hip and rolling them over so his back is against the bed. 

He breaks away from her instantly. “Katara, what—”

She smirks, rolling her hips against his. He stops speaking to swallow back a groan, and she’s far too pleased to see she has the same exact effect on Zuko that he has on her. “My turn.” 

He stares at her with wide eyes. “You—you want to see me?” 

“I want to do a lot more than just see, Zuko.” She trails a finger down to his navel, where she pulls at the strings of his trousers and tugs them off. 

“But, why?” he asks, genuinely curious. Katara stops straight in her tracks. Didn’t he know? That he was beautiful, so much so that she had dreamt about him for countless nights, that she had seen his face burned behind her eyelids for as long as she could remember? Zuko  _ was _ beautiful, inside and out. Sure, it took a long time to get past his rough exterior and general unpleasantness, but he was everything,  _ everything _ that she had wanted. 

She leans forward and brushes a strand of hair off of his forehead. “You have a scar running along the back of your right shoulder. I want to know where that came from. I want to know the story behind the scar behind your right knee, the one inside your elbow, all of them. Zuko, I just want to, because it’s you. There’s no other reason.” 

“Oh,” he says. He’s uncomfortable, she can tell, because Zuko doesn’t do emotions, but he nods anyways. “Ok, I guess.” 

She smirks. “Good.” 

She kisses down his chest again, but this time only where the small scars on his chest are. One day, she’ll ask him the stories behind every single one of them, she swears she will, but not today. Today was about something else. 

Zuko gulps down a shaky breath as her breath ghosts over his scars, especially the small, round one on his hip bone. She brushes her thumb over it, feeling the silkiness of the scar tissue before leaning down and kissing it. “What’s this from?” she asks. She can’t resist, just this one scar. 

Zuko tips his head back and stares at the ceiling. “Me. The first time I burned myself practicing firebending.”

“How old were you?” 

Zuko closes his eyes. “Six. Azula was already a prodigy, so good at bending, and I wanted to push myself. So I practiced, and as always, I let my emotions get the better of me.” 

Katara wants to heal every single scar on his body, but she knows that most of his scars have other stories behind them that run deeper, that sink further, leaving scars of their own. She will ask him, one day, if he wants any of them healed, if he wants her to take his pain away. One day, she will ask him if he wants his scar healed, if he wants to come with her to the North Pole. She swears that she will do it. 

“I don’t know,” she says instead. “You probably worked so hard to do well. And you’re not the only one who feels the physical toll of their bending sometimes, Zuko. Some of your scars are badges of honor, not shame.” 

He frowns at her, but she can see he’s thinking about what she said. “Thanks, Katara.” 

She smoothes a hand over the skin of his stomach, feeling it twitch underneath her touch, and curls her fingers around the loincloth covering him. “Don’t thank me quite yet,” she says, tugging at the material and letting it slip off of his hips. 

When she finally frees his cock from the confines of his loincloth, she watches as Zuko heaves a breath, fingers digging into the bed. She sits on his knees and wraps her hand around it, curious as to what it feels like. 

He’s hot and heavy in her hand, and the skin is somehow both softer than she’d thought it’d be and impossibly hard. She tilts her head and runs her hand up the length of it, and Zuko bucks underneath her touch. 

“Katara,” he breathes. “You’re going to kill me.” 

She laughs, stroking his cock a little firmer now, enjoying the way his eyes squeeze shut and his head falls back. “I hope not. That’s a lot less fun for me.” 

Zuko groans as she palms his cock with increasing confidence, running her hand up and down the length of it. She swipes her thumb over the glistening liquid at the top and runs it down the length of his cock. 

She thinks back to something she heard once while in Ba Sing Se, something that, at the time, had made her blush fiercely and run away, but now intrigues her. She wants to make Zuko fall apart, the same way he made her fall apart. 

She moves further down her body and leans down, flicking her eyes up at him. His eyes are still shut, staring at the ceiling, and she grips the base of his cock more firmly before lowering her head down and flicking her tongue over the tip. 

Zuko swears then, eyes shooting open, and he looks down to find Katara running her tongue along the length of his cock, along the vein on the underside of the shaft. “Fuck, Katara,” he groans, sounding utterly wrecked. She likes this, likes the sounds she’s pulled out of him, so she decides that whatever she’s doing must be right. 

She brushes her hair from her face and leans down once more, now wrapping her lips around his cock and taking as much of him into her mouth as she can. Zuko’s hips twitch violently underneath her palms, but she can tell he’s trying to hold back his reactions so that she doesn’t choke. 

She traces her tongue along the prominent vein that runs along his cock, from the tip to as far up as she can, and she uses her hands for whatever doesn’t fit into her mouth. The taste of him on her tongue is admittedly, not the most delicious thing in the world, but it’s not the worst either, slightly salty. And she likes the way he sits heavy and hard in her mouth. 

Zuko then tangles his hands in her hair and pulls her closer, gently. She doesn’t mind, and gently scrapes her teeth along his cock, swirling her tongue around the tip. She’s never done this before, relies on what she has overheard and the books she has read, but she finds that listening to the sounds Zuko makes is far more intriguing. 

Katara sucks on his cock then, taking as much of him into her mouth as possible before easing if out again, and Zuko fucking groans, wrecked, and grips her hair tighter. “Katara.” 

She hums around his cock, something she can tell he likes, as he grip on her hair before impossibly tighter, and he becomes even harder. The tip of him is weeping freely now, and she runs her tongue over his cock to lick it off, something that’s far more arousing to her than she even thought it would be. 

In fact, this whole thing is incredibly arousing to her, if the throbbing in her cunt is any indication. 

Katara then releases him from her mouth and instead presses a line of kisses up his cock, taking it in her hand once more and pumping the length of him. “God, Katara, you’re amazing,” Zuko says. And although the praise is not something unusual falling from his lips, it still feels fucking amazing. 

She strokes the length of him, watching for what gets the best reactions from him, and she wants him to come, of course she does, but now that she’s gotten a look at his cock, beautiful and hard, all she can think about is it inside of her, fucking into her, and she nearly comes on the spot just from that. 

She nips at his cock, palming his balls in her hand, touching him. Zuko is so responsive, the way his eyes are squeezed shut, and Katara needs him to come, needs to prove to him that she wants him just as much as he wants her. 

She takes him into her mouth as deep as she can, stroking her tongue along his cock, sweeping over every inch of skin in her mouth with broad, flat strokes, occasionally swiping over the tip to remove the liquid beading there, and  _ fuck, _ the way Zuko breathes and grips her hair is really so much more of a turn on than she thought it would be. 

Katara gently lets her teeth rake against him again, and he bucks against her mouth suddenly, unable to control himself. Her eyes water, and she pulls back for a second to catch her bearings. “I’m sorry,” Zuko says. She flicks her eyes up to look at him, and he looks devastated. But she likes it, and wraps a hand around the base of his cock, shaking her head. By the way his face changes when she swirls her tongue around his cock before taking almost the whole length of him, she knows he gets the message. 

But just as she feels him grow larger and heavier in her mouth, and she picks up the pace of her tongue, Zuko’s hands are brushing away. She releases him instantly, but looks up at him, face downturned. “Why did you do that?” 

He huffs a laugh and drags her up for a kiss. It’s messy and sloppy, his hands tangled into her hair and pressing the strands against her cheeks, but she kisses him back all the same. 

“Katara, if I let you continue, I would have spilled like an idiot in your mouth. I was losing all sorts of control.” 

“That was the point.” 

Zuko blushes, but he leans forward, lips brushing against her ear. “So you  _ don’t _ want me to fuck you? I thought you did. I know I want to fuck you.” 

Spirits, that was hot. She inhales sharply. “I—I didn’t say  _ that.” _ she protests. 

“That’s what I thought.” His tongue traces the shell of her ear delicately, and she’s sure he can feel how wet she is, how badly she wants him inside of her. 

“Fuck,” Zuko groans, and the rumble of his voice right there, his hot breath brushing against her hair, it’s too fucking much, her blood simmering at merely the thought. 

“I really hope so,” she says seductively, or tries to. All that comes out is more like a whimper. Angi, she craves him, like a starving man craves food, and she is still insatiable, after all he has already given her. 

Zuko rolls them over so he’s hovering over her once more, brushes back a strand of hair. “Are you sure?” he asks once more, and he’s so different from the boy he was just a second ago that she nearly gets whiplash. But that is who Zuko is. He asks her, first. He never takes. 

She nods. “And...what about, uh, certain risks?” He looks terrified to be broaching the subject, but does so nonetheless.

_ Oh.  _ Well, that was certainly a justified worry. “I’ve got tea,” she says. 

“That’s good,” Zuko rasps, and then he’s leaning down and kissing her deeply, tongue swiping across the seam of her lips until she opens up for him, throws her arms around his neck and pulls him closer, closer. 

He breaks the kiss, panting into her neck, before reaching down and guiding the tip of his cock so it rests at her cunt. 

_ “Zuko, please.” _

And he thrusts into her, quick enough so that the breath is stolen clean out of her lungs, but not quick enough that it’s painful. Her walls clench around him, struggling to take him in, and fuck, he feels so good she thinks she might pass out right then and there. He’s the perfect size, large enough so that she feels a sweet burn start at her cunt, but not so large that he’s painful, and she bites the curve of his neck when he pulls out only to thrust back into her. 

“Agni, Katara, you feel so good,” he breathes, speaking into her skin. “You’re so tight, and you feel amazing. So good. Are you this wet for me?” 

He swivels his hips just a little bit as he thrusts forward once more, and the new angle has Katara arching her back, nails raking down Zuko’s back harsh enough to draw blood. “Yes, god, yes,” she babbles. Colors swirl and splash beyond her eyelids, and she swears she can feel everything, the scrape of Zuko’s cock against her inner walls, each individual dip and rise of his tongue as it sweeps along the sweat-soaked skin of her neck, his blunt nails digging into her hip, so hard one might think it would be painful, but right now, it’s anything but.

“You’re so beautiful, Katara. So beautiful I thought I was dreaming. Fuck, you feel so good around me, hot and tight and wet. I’ve wanted to do this to you, for so long. You’re amazing, so amazing. I want you so bad.” Katara hears every single word he says, and they only add fuel to flame, and if possible she gets wetter, more desperate to come. Zuko seems unaware of the words falling from his lips, but fuck, she wants him too. 

“I thought about you a lot,” she confesses, eyes screwed shut as he plunges into her.

“Oh yeah? Like what?” 

“Your hands,” she admits. As if to tease her, one of his hands slips down her body to lift up her leg and hook it around his waist even high, changing the angle so his cock drives into her even deeper, her eyes rolling into the back of her head.  _ “Oh!  _ I—I thought about you so much, late at night, when I wo—  _ Oh! _ —would touch myself thinking about you and your hands.” 

He groans. “You get off thinking about me?” 

“Mostly about your hands,” she admits. “They’re beautiful. I’d think about how they’d feel on me, and how you’d touch me. Fuck, and I could never really get myself off very well, but it was always a little easier when I thought about you.” 

“Hmm. And what exactly did you see when you got yourself off?” 

She whimpers as he thrusts into her roughly, shockwaves of pleasure radiating throughout her body. “How you’d make me come. Your fingers, inside of me, and then on my body.” 

He lifts his head to lock eyes with her. “Fuck, Katara, that’s so hot.” He pulls the other hip higher and thrusts into her once more, and her nails dig into the skin of his back. “God, you're so close, I can feel it. Are you going to come for me, Katara? Are you going to come on my cock?”

She nods. “Yes, yes I will.” 

“Say it, Katara, or I won’t let you come,” he promises. He slows his thrusts down, drags his cock so slowly out of her cunt it feels like an endless eternity before he slides back in. “I want to hear you beg for me, or I’ll keep doing this until you do.” 

Everything in Katara does not want to beg, stands up straight and defies him, but god, she needs to come, needs him to fuck her, harder and harder until she finds the release she’s been looking for. 

“Come on, Katara,” he says, pushing into her sharply, so clean she bucks against him. “Otherwise, I won’t think you really do want to come. I might have to leave you here. Fuck, and your cunt takes me so good, doesn’t it. You’re so tight and so full of me, and I know you want to come, badly. Fuck, I want to hear you  _ scream,” _ he promises, voice dropping so low and so deep she has to strain to hear him, just a hair’s breadth away from her.

Katara presses her mouth shut. If she screams, she will wake everyone in the house, and they will come running. She can’t do that. But Zuko doesn’t seem to care, thrusts into her so powerfully the bed underneath them creaks a bit. “I want to hear you _ , _ Katara. I need to fuck you—I need you to know who’s fucking you, that’re you’re so wet for me your cunt is  _ dripping _ , I want you to know that beautiful cunt stretched only around me. Come on, Katara. Beg for it.” 

She abandons all pretenses right then and there, too fucking gone to even think about anything else, and who is she to deny Zuko what he wants. “Fuck me, Zuko.  _ Now, please.” _

He grins at her, so blindingly bright she wonders for a second if she is staring into the sun instead. “That’s it.” He swoops down to kiss her, and even with Zuko inside of her, even with the scratch of the sheets on her back, even with everything else she is feeling, her whole world quiets at the feeling of his lips on hers. 

He pulls away just the slightest and says into her mouth, “come, Katara, for me,” just as he plunges inside her, deep and striking the perfect spot. 

It’s that that breaks her, and she can feel her walls clench around him as she tips her head back, too fucking gone to worry if she screams, but just before she does, Zuko covers her mouth with his own, swallowing her sounds. She shatters like a fragile piece of glass, all her senses dulled as her body gives into the pleasure, nails raking down his back, her cunt clenching almost torturously around his cock, so tight it steals the breath out of her lungs, and then he’s coming inside of her, burying himself so deep inside her she bucks against him, and she can feel his cock pulse inside of her, drawing out her own orgasm. 

And through all this, Zuko’s mouth never leaves her own, still fused together, and it’s her who finally breaks the kiss so she can breathe, chest heaving as she clutches his arms tightly. 

He makes no move to get off of her, tipping his forehead so it rests against hers. And she can’t quite open her eyes yet, can’t look at those amber eyes that read her so well. 

And the immensity of what they’ve done dawns on her. Fuck. She had  _ sex. _ With  _ Zuko. _ Like, in the middle of a fucking war. What was  _ wrong _ with her, for Spirits’s sake. 

It was pretty fucking amazing sex, though. 

“Well,” he says, the first one to break the silence. She peeks open to find him looking right at her. “That happened.” 

He gently pulls out of her, and she tries not to wince. “Yeah, it did.” She waves a hand and summons some of the water from the jug on the dresser to her, intending to soak a cloth she’s pulled from her nightstand with it and clean herself off. So, she’s shocked to find Zuko gently taking the cloth from her. “Let me,” he says. 

She blushes, but hands him the cloth, and he cleans her off silently. It should be awkward, and it slightly is, but Katara doesn’t feel  _ that _ bad about it. She was an active participant, and she can make her own decisions. So they had sex? Whatever. 

Zuko finishes cleaning her off and tosses the cloth into the trash can by the door from where he’s laying on the bed. “Well, at least it was good.” He seems to realize what he’s said five seconds after the words register in her mind, and his face explodes red.

“Oh my god,” she laughs, shoulders shaking. How was he this fucking awkward? She loved it. “Yes, Zuko,” she nods, still laughing. “It was very good.” 

He rubs the back of his neck nervously. “So….what do we do now?” 

She rolls over so she’s on her stomach and pokes him in the side of the chest. “What makes you think I know?” 

“I dunno.” 

Katara runs a hand through her tangled,  _ tangled _ hair (god, this was going to be such a mess to brush out later) and sighs. “I mean, I liked it.” 

Zuko nods vigorously. “I liked it too.” 

“Hell yeah,” she says, and holds up her hand. Zuko looks confused but gives her a high-five anyways. She smiles at him. “I don’t know. I’d like to do this again. And I’m not really sure we should be starting anything  _ now, _ anyways.” 

“No, you're absolutely right.” Zuko smirks at her. “And we can’t tell anyone, of course. It’ll make their brains melt.” He pauses. “Maybe we should tell them.” 

“Zuko!” She smacks him on the chest. “No!” 

He sighs. “Fine. So what do you want to do?” 

“Keep this quiet. Just for sex, right now.” She winces at the words. She doesn’t want just sex with Zuko, she wants everything, a future and golden smiles and more, but right now, Katara cannot let herself want, not for anything that is uncertain. She will take what she has now. 

Zuko reaches over and trails a finger down her face softly. How the fuck is she supposed to think only about the present when he does things like that? He frowns at her, but nods anyways. “Makes sense.” 

He shifts in the bed, and with a shock, she realizes he is sitting up and getting ready to leave. “Where are you going?” 

He glances over his shoulder. “To my room.” 

Katara flushes before she says, “you don’t  _ have _ to leave. You can stay, if you want.” 

Zuko smiles at her, unexpectedly soft. “Tempting, but can you imagine if Aang or Toph knocked on the door and found us? It’s too risky.” He reaches over and presses a kiss to her forehead, before quickly tugging his clothes on. He walks over to her once more, threading his hands through her hair. “See you in the morning.” He leans down and kisses her, firmly and quickly. 

“We’ll do this again?” she asks, hopeful. He turns around from where his hand is curled around her door. 

“Of course.” 

Then, quieter than she thought possible, he twists the doorknob and vanishes into the dark hallway. Katara sits there, sheets bunched around her waist, staring at the door dumbly. When she finally shakes herself out of her stupor, she lies back down on the bed and pulls the covers up to her chest, reaching over to blow the flame on her bedside out. 

But even as she tries to fall asleep, she realizes that her bed smells like Zuko, and when she closes her eyes, she can feel the trail of his fingers down her side, brushing over her neck, digging into her hair. 

Katara sighs and buries her head in her pillow. Next time, she’d make him stay. She wouldn’t fall asleep otherwise. 

She already knew she was getting none tonight, without him. 

**Author's Note:**

> your comments and kudos make me happier than sokka with cactus juice! i really hoped you enjoyed the fic! i'd love to hear from you guys! you can also find me on tumblr: @parkersedith


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